


A Christmas Miracle

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Series: Home Alone AU [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, Drama, Get-Together Fic, M/M, OC POV, TSA doesn't want to be there either fam, Third Person Limited POV, airport security, bite me, but also kinda not?, but mainly yes, including myself, sad french boys soap, yes this is satire on the entire fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: What happened in those two hours that Enjolras and Grantaire were stuck in airport security.Warnings: reference to racial injustice, some language, TSA, slightly problematic storyteller





	A Christmas Miracle

**Author's Note:**

> As always, beta'd by the incredible [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait).

Dennis pokes his head into the surveillance room, looking for his partner. Cynthia is usually keeping an eye on security check-in station 2. Twenty minutes ago when he’d gone to relieve her for break, though, she was nowhere to be found.

“Cynthia, why aren’t you out on post?” he asks, spotting her signature splash of blue in bleach-blonde hair.

She turns her head toward him, pencil eyebrow raised and popping some gum. “These boys were causing all kinds of fuss on their way through security,” she says, indicating the two-way glass with a nod of her head.

“We’re waiting on them to stop shouting at each other before we question them,” Anika elucidates. “Going on thirty minutes already.”

Dennis pulls up between where the two women are seated, looking through the window. There are two men in the otherwise-empty room: one has wild golden ringlets contrasting bronze skin; the other has dark curls, olive skin, and a faceful of stubble. He doesn’t need to be able to hear the barbs they undoubtedly toss back and forth over the intercom to see very plainly that they are bickering. The dark-haired man slouches in his seat, arms crossed over his chest and wearing a sardonic grin as he speaks out of the side of his mouth, not bothering to look in the blond man’s direction. The blond, in contrast, has his body turned almost entirely in the dark-haired man’s direction, gesturing in a way that makes Dennis think that he is trying to force the brunet turn through sheer force of will.

“What’re they even arguing over?” Dennis asks, reluctantly intrigued. He still has to get Cynthia to take her break and to check the line traffic in the east wing before he clocks out in forty minutes, but he’s not so busy that he can’t stay for a little longer.

“They’ve been at it since we brought ‘em in,” Anika explains. “R over here—"

“Which one’s that?”

“Dark-haired one,” Anika answers patiently. “So R was already picking at Blondie—”

“Why doesn’t Blondie get a name?” Dennis asks, confused.

Cynthia huffs. “‘Cuz R’s called him about a thousand different things already, so we’re not sure what it is yet. Mostly sticks between Angel, Apollo, and Chief. Can ya stop interrupting the woman so she can get on with the story?”

Dennis puts his hands up in surrender, and Anika continues on. “So R was picking at Blondie about security and privacy, and Blondie’s talking about ‘proper security measures’ and all that. Then Jackson tries to pull R aside for a ‘random selection’—”

“Fucking hell, Jackson.” Dennis closes his eyes in irritation at his coworker.

“That’s what I told him,” Cynthia adds.

“That’s what we’ve all told him, the racist jerk,” Anika concurs. “So after all that fuss, you’d think that Blondie would feel self-righteous, yeah? But no, he starts arguing with the Goshdarned staff! Yelling about ‘inherent racism’ and ‘probable cause’ and all that. Drawing the whole darned airport’s attention.”

“Coulda smuggled a suitcase of cyanide through the chaos,” Cynthia mutters in assent.

“We had to get them outta there. But as it turns out—and this is what makes things even stranger—they’re mother-freaking French.” For the first time, Dennis tunes in to what the men are saying: a constant stream of French, unintelligible to him besides a couple of pronouns and participles.

“So what are you both still doing here?”

Anika glances in Cynthia’s direction. 

“Listening to this argument is the most fun I’ve had at this job since the incident with Avery and the slushie machine.” Cynthia turns her attention back to the window, smiling cheekily at the boys’ rapid French.

Anika turns her attention to Dennis. “Better than a soap,” she shrugs guiltily. “And Cynthia’s been translating.”

“Really,” responds Dennis dryly. To the best of his knowledge, Cynthia might have graduated high school, and twenty years ago at that. His faith in her ability to understand a foreign language is matched only by his belief that his wife isn’t sleeping with his brother—and that paternity test had come back positive.

“Shhhh, R’s struck a nerve, and I need to know how Angel’s gonna respond!” sputters Cynthia in an impassioned whisper. A moment later, she sits back, hand on her chest. “Holy shit.”.

“What did he say?” Anika begs excitedly.

“So, R was saying something about not being able to count on people to do the right thing, yadda yadda—kid’s talkative, Jesus Christ—and how Blondie’s time would be better spent learning about the reality of people instead of the idea he’s got built up in his head of them.”

“Yikes,” Dennis comments before he can stop himself.

“And??” Anika encourages excitedly.

“Angel-face told him that if R was anything to show for it, he needed all of the time he could invest into this work.”

Dennis releases a low whistle. “Sheeeeeeet.”

“Point for Angel,” Anika breathes, making a tally on a clipboard Dennis hadn’t seen before. The room is silent except for the rapidfire stream of French murmuring over the intercom.

“Well damn, Cynthia, what’s he saying now?” Dennis says in spite of himself. “R sounds like he’s talking a mile a minute, keep up!”

There’s silence for another thirty seconds before Cynthia speaks up. “Ah, it’s just a bunch of mythology and puns. Lotsa veneration. Pretty sure he’s half in-love with Blondie. Seems like he’s trying to shrug off what Blondie said, but I think it cut ‘im pretty deep—wait, wait.”

The room holds its breath.

“Okay, so before I start: how much do y’all know about French politics?”

Dennis absently thinks that he may owe his wife and brother an apology as he pulls up a seat, ready to listen.

 

\---

 

Ten minutes after Dennis’s shift has ended, he’s rushing back to the surveillance room as quickly as the precariously full bucket of popcorn in his arms will allow. Any other day, he’d be halfway home by now. Any other Christmas? All the way home with a speeding ticket in tow. This year, he finds that he is in no real rush to go anywhere but back to his spot beside Cynthia and her overpopped chewing gum.

He picks his way past Margot and Adil back to his former seat, which surprisingly hasn’t been stolen in his sprint for snacks. _Guess there is still honor in the world_ , he thinks, tuning back in to Cynthia’s words.

“Okay, so Cynthia said that Enjolras” (that’s Angel’s name, they’ve discovered, and that R is representative of some equally terrible pun) “is asking why R doesn’t support his work, and R said he runs around doing everything Enjolras asks him to. There was a long list, but I guess that isn’t enough for Enjolras? Anyway, it was a point for R, but I don’t think anyone cares about that stupid scoreboard anymore,” Anika whispers, grabbing a handful of popcorn from his bucket. Dennis can’t bring himself to be bothered by it. 

“No physical contact though, right?”

“No, closest call is still that time with the cheek.” The whole room had gasped at the proximity, releasing exasperated sighs and groans when R’s response to the near-brush had been to jerk his chair off the ground and away from Enjolras. The move had, however, turned his seat so that he now faced Enjolras, occasionally looking at him instead of making sarcastic-sounding comments over his shoulder. 

Dennis has never been interested in LGBT media before tonight, but he makes a note himself to check out what’s available if there’s any chance it’s as engaging as this.

“Oh my God everyone,” Cynthia gasps, and the room dies down immediately. “We’re finally getting to the heart of things: Enjolras asked why Grantaire doesn’t think that he can make a difference and always doubts him. Grantaire says Enjolras is the one part of their mission that he does believe in--it’s basically a love confession!” 

The way the entire room remains silent through the furtive French that follows, a passerby might assume that everyone in attendance understood what was being said. 

“R asks what they’re doing. They—oh my God, they’ve been hooking up! For weeks!”

Monique wordlessly circles a name with a big red marker and writes a number next to it, holding it up, but Dennis doesn’t care how much he owes Esteban just yet.

“It’s not just hooking up, though—they’ve been talking? Oh God, there’s feelings, this goes deep y’all,” Cynthia continues. Dennis has a steady stream of popcorn that he is frantically chewing, eyes wide with anticipation. Like this, he can almost pretend he understands what’s happening in real-time.

Before him, the two men are seated in front of one another. R is looking down at his hands in his lap, and Enjolras—Enjolras just looks heartbroken. He’s reaching forward for R’s hands but seems to think better of it, looking away.

“Enjolras, what are you doing???” Paula shouts from the back. “Kiss him!”

“Shh! That’s what got him into this mess in the first place—they need talk this out!!” Adil bites back.

The room returns to rapt silence. 

“Enjolras says he doesn’t know what they’re doing,” Cynthia whispers. Dennis thinks that if he could take his eyes off of the lovers he might see tears in the tough woman’s eyes. 

“Enjolras says he thought he knew what he was doing, but R’s…unpredictable? Unpredictable. He never knows how R will react, and there are times he thinks he knows, only to…not. Ah, to be wrong.

“Oh, fuck, no, R, sweetie,” Cynthia cries. Dennis tries to ignore the pressure threatening to break behind his own eyes. “R says that if Enjolras thinks he’s so wrong for his plan—no, life? I think that’s the idea—that they should stop.”

He can hear Anika crying in earnest next to him and hands her his handkerchief, which she declines. He passes it to Esteban on the other side of him, who seems equally moved by the exchange before them and accepts the cloth.

Enjolras grabs R’s hand now, pulling it up to his own cheek. The action brings R to look into Enjolras’s face.

“Enjolras says—oh God, I want this on my tombstone—that his feelings for R are the only thing he’s ever been sure of with him.”

The dams have broken. Dennis is crying.

“R’s being a self-doubter…Enjolras is spelling it out…dear Lord above, he said the ‘love’ word!! And R…”

The room is filled with half-stifled sobs.

“R loves him back!”

The couple pulls into an embrace on the other side of the glass. Everyone in the room stands, cheering and hugging and kissing those around them, pressing salty tears and streaks of makeup against cheeks.

“We did it!” Steve calls from somewhere in the room, and a cheer goes up.

“Shhh, shhhhh! They’re looking!” hisses Cynthia. The sounds level drops immediately, and sure enough both French boys are eyeing the glass peculiarly. 

There’s a clearing of throats throughout the room as off-shift people begin their departures and on-shift people try to straighten themselves up before going to their respective stations. Dennis fights his way toward Cynthia, clasping his hand on her shoulder.

“You did real well tonight, Partner. And uh, I’m. I’m proud to work alongside you. Thank you.”

Cynthia grins at him, still clacking at her gum despite that it must be tough and flavorless by now. “Well, I’d rather I didn’t have to prove myself by narrating an entire sad French boys soap, but you’re welcome. Partner.” She clears her throat. “All right, whoever’s on security detail for station 2, you get to question them. Give ‘em another ten minutes or so—make sure they’re settled and unsuspicious before you go in for their questioning. And for God’s sake, remember to have a translator there: we don’t want a repeat of what happened down in Jacksonville.”

**Author's Note:**

> Alt title: Sad French Boys Soap
> 
> Be on the look-out for the final installment of this series: the morning that they forgot Gav!
> 
> PLEASE comment below to let me know what you think! I've been playing more with perspective and styles, and this was definitely challenging for me to totally figure out and balance. Alternatively, hit me up [at my tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com)!


End file.
